1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to methods for obtaining information about software, and more particularly for obtaining and displaying information about software releases.
2. Discussion of Background Art
The development and maintenance of computer software is affected by a number of issues. There are an almost innumerable number of combinations of hardware, software and network environments that must be supported. Often, many of these environments are incompatible with each other. In addition, each of the environments undergoes rapid change as technology advances in their respective areas. As a result, it can be expected that a computer software product will require many changes during its life cycle.
A typical software development process has four major phases. The first is the design phase, where the operating characteristics of the software are defined. This is followed by the development phase, where programmers and engineers write the software to meet the requirements defined during the design phase. The third phase is the test phase, where the software is tested to ensure that it meets the requirements defined during the design phase, and has no major problems. The fourth phase is the release phase, where the software is provided to customers and other end users. During the development, test and release phases of the software life cycle, problems or design issues may be encountered where the software does not operate in a desirable way. These problems are often called xe2x80x9cbugs.xe2x80x9d In addition, it is often desirable to add new features to the software as customer needs become more evident. Fixing bugs and adding features require the initiation of a new cycle of design, development, test and release phases.
It is typical in the software industry to organize releases of new software in a hierarchical manner. A major release of software is one in which significant changes have been made to the software. For example, significant new functionality may have been added or removed, or the software""s user interface may have been dramatically changed. A minor release is typically one in which bugs have been fixed and improvements have been added to the software, but no major functionality has changed. In addition, there may be other releases of software that are below the level of a minor release, such as a maintenance release, an interim release, a test release or an emergency bug-fix release. These releases typically do not encompass as many bug fixes or other changes to the software. All of these releases are commonly assigned identifiers in order to distinguish them from one another. A commonly used format for identifiers is a series of numbers, separated by periods or enclosed within parentheses which identify the major and maintenance release levels for the software. For example, the identifier xe2x80x9c11.2(13)xe2x80x9d may indicate major release 11.2 and maintenance release 13 within that major release.
In addition, build numbers may be used in combination with release numbers to identify software. A software build is the process of compiling and linking all of the components of a software product. Typically many different programs and modules make up a software product, and they must all be assembled into a package. A build number is essentially a sequence number assigned to the software. For example an identifier xe2x80x9c11.2(6.1)xe2x80x9d may indicate build 6.1 for major release 11.2 of a software product. During the development and maintenance process many reasons for building software occur. For example a maintenance build is a software build intended to be released to customers that fixes bugs that have been discovered since the last release of the software. An interim build is intended to be used by internal users to test the software before releasing it to customers or for repairing software in response to urgent customer problems. A throttle build is used for final testing of a software product before final approval, and therefore must incorporate very tight change controls. A renumber build is one that has been tested and is built again to be labeled with a new release number or identifier.
Many different parties with varying needs are acutely interested in the status of particular releases of software. Software developers need to know when the software they are working on must be ready in order to meet the deadline for a scheduled release. Customers want to know when software will be available that fixes problems they are encountering. Technical writers want to know what bug fixes and features will be included in new releases so that they can create documentation on the bug-fix or features. Product managers and customer service engineers want to know what bugs or features are included in a release so that they may accurately convey the information to current or potential customers. Each of these parties has a wide range of expertise in dealing with computers and software, varying from novice to expert.
In addition, these parties may be in very different locations. The development staff may be in one location, the maintenance staff in another, and the technical writers in yet another location. Customer service engineers and the customers may be scattered around the world.
In the past, specialized products have been developed to meet some of the individual needs of these parties. Software source code control systems have been created to allow software developers to control and identify changes to software. Additionally, software developers have benefited from software development environments which have been created to control the compiling and linking that occurs during the build process. Other systems and methods have been created to control and maintain the schedule of major and minor releases. Still other systems have been developed to report and track the history of bugs and enhancement requests. Each of these systems typically maintains their own database, each has their own user interface, and each may be centrally located and controlled.
Unfortunately, for a person to obtain complete and accurate information on a software release, he or she must have access to and knowledge of how to use the various tools that have been developed to address the individual aspects of software development issues detailed above. In addition, the user must often either have the required software on their own personal computer or be located on the same internal corporate network.
In response to these concerns, what is needed is a method for retrieving software release information that can be used in a variety of locations and environments, that can be used by novices and experts alike, and that overcomes the problems of the prior art.
The present invention provides a system and method for retrieving software release information. One component within the system of the present invention automatically gathers data from various databases and displays information on the releases containing a fix for an identified defect. A second component determines a date by which a bug must fixed if it is to be included in an identified release. A third component presents the dates of various software release events associated with a particular release. A fourth component identifies all of the software release events that are to occur within a user specified week. A fifth component automatically generates a list of defects already integrated into a particular software release.
All of the above described components dynamically generate HTML defining a web page thereby enabling the display of the software release information on displays located anywhere in the world having a network connection to a computer implementing the system and method of the present invention.
These and other aspects of the invention will be recognized by those skilled in the art upon review of the detailed description, drawings, and claims set forth below.